Of Criminals and Canadians
by scarlet-angle-13
Summary: Jeanne Williams is back for another year at Hogwarts with her two best friends. With a mass murderer on the loose and a kind, but oddly absent, new defence teacher, what adventures will await our little Canadian this year of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Book 2 of the Canadian at Hogwarts series.


Jeanne had been happy to see her home again. Her first year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry was eventful to say the least. The twins had followed through and allowed her use of the Map, which she took to studying, trying to figure out all of the enchantments she could, which helped her improve her charms work exponentially. Flitwick had noticed and so had professor Snape. Both were proud of the young blond. So much had happened over her first year that, when James had asked for specifics, she didn't know where to start explaining it. She had tried to start with the sorting, but then remembered the drama from the train and the Alley, and then she remembered her little spat with Arthur and it all seemed to jumble together, so she wrote it down in a leather-bound diary, which she swore to keep for next year too.

James was disappointed by the way Jeanne described the sorting hat, and some of the inept professors at the school. He was even more disappointed that she had been kicked out of one of the main classes for most of the year.

"And then Mr Filches cat was petrified by a Basilisk and…" Jake cut her off at the word Basilisk.

"What was that you said JJ, a what petrified a cat?" Jeanne blinked before the gravity of the situation finally hit home. There had been a basilisk in her school. There had been a **Basilisk **in her _school. There had been a man-eating __**Basilisk **__in her __**School! **_

"Oh my god there was a Basilisk in my school and it could have killed someone!" she had yelled in panic, before the twins had leapt into action and calmed her down before she could freak out even more at the fact she had been living in the same building as a deadly Basilisk for almost a year.

"So, a new set of twins Jeannie? Replacing old Jake and Jamie so easily?" James sighed dramatically. Jeanne abandoned her panic to reassure the two that she had done no such thing.

"Never!" she proclaimed, grabbing one of each of the twin's arms in a vice like grip. "I would never abandon or replace my favourite boys. Gred and Forge are my friends – and old enough to go down to the village for a sweet run – but you two, you are my boys. Always have been always will be. You aren't getting rid of me that easily." The three laughed the tension away and Jeanne told them all about her success in potions and transfiguration. They spent an entire week going over what they had done at school, and the boys swore not to tell Matthew about the Gryffindor idiots, or the Basilisk.

Jeanne liked Hogwarts, so they couldn't just get her pulled from the school, so she could be with them. Plus, they wanted to hear more about the troublesome twins and the Quidditch announcer, Lee Jordan. They sounded like the perfect people to keep their JJ out of trouble when they couldn't. After all, she was great at keeping away from trouble, but when she didn't it went horribly, horribly wrong. She had been tossed in a frozen lake, been witness to several murders, gotten lost in Paris twice, and been attacked for their laws. It was awful luck.

Jeanne had spent over a month with her brother Quin, learning new, more advanced potions that usually weren't taught until NEWT level at Hogwarts. It was loads of fun. She had even been shown how to brew a love potion called Amortentia. Well, she had been after she had sworn never to use it on another person. Although it made a very good perfume, after all no one could say it smelt bad. Perhaps she could figure out how to tweak the potion, some way to get rid of the love potion bit, but still keep the odd occurrence of pleasant smells. She would have to raid the Hogwarts Library when School started again. She wasn't allowed in her uncles' magical library anymore. It was a long story.

The short version was that she may or may not have accidently set a Niffler loose in the house, on accident. She had only wanted to see if she could teach it a few tricks, like how to fetch and how to stay. She liked it. It had a very strange mark on its left back paw that looked almost like a butterfly, so she had named it. After all, how many Nifflers would have such an obscure mark on their pelts. She had named it Jem, after a character in a book Nova had read to her. She had been forced to release him into the wild after that, even if he still visited the house every other day to see her. She always had a shiny rock for the little Niffler when it returned. She had hundreds of them from her copious amounts of visits to the falls with James, over the years. If the rocks had been worth anything, then the two would never have to work a day in their abnormally long wizarding lifetime.

Jem was a good Niffler, he really was, but there were just so many shiny things in the Library and he couldn't help himself. But she had succeeded in teaching him how to stay, wait and fetch. Which proved that Nifflers were intelligent beings capable of higher thought levels than most wizards and witches given them credit for.

The Kitten Alfred had gotten her last summer had grown since she had last seen it. It was just over a year old, and its fur was a beautiful red with brown patches. He was a beauty and he was fluffy. The perfect combination. His name was O'Malley.

She adored the kitten and was heartbroken that he was too small and too young to take to Hogwarts last year, but she could take him this year. O'Malley seemed just as excited to explore a new place, and he liked playing tag with Jem, who Jeanne was determined to smuggle into Hogwarts with her. After all he slept under her floorboards, under the house. She could hear him playing with the shiny rocks at night. It was kind of like a lullaby. Tip-tap tap-tap-tip tippy-tippy-tap-tap Tap-tap-tip. She had gotten used to the sounds the Niffler made at night. So, when one night in late July, she didn't hear the Nifflers tapping she got worried. She had snuck out of the house and checked the small crawl space beneath the house, and she found the shiny rocks, but Jem was missing. Jeanne was devastated and returned to her bed. The night seemed far too quiet without Jem's tapping. She waited for Jem to appear the next day, but he didn't. She waited up to hear him tapping that night. But there was no tapping.

A week went by with no sign of Jem. He didn't come for the mountain of shiny rock's; he didn't return to the crawl space he had claimed as his. He didn't come into the house to find food or other things that wouldn't be missed. Jem did not come because Jem was no longer. Quin had been out hunting in the woods, looking for whatever kept eating his flowers and herbs, when he came across the Niffler corpse. It was hidden away and rotting, but he knew the mark on the left hind leg. He had covered the creature in a cloth and transfigured it into a box around it. He brought it home and buried it in front of the crawl space, putting the shiny rocks in a circle around the grave, and transfiguring one into a small tomb stone that read:

_**Here lies Jem the smartest little Niffler there ever was**_

Then he left to tell his little sister the sad news. What happened afterwards was heart breaking. He could see the moment that her heart shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. Jem had been her little Niffler, her little friend who she thought was a secret. He hadn't been, but they pretended he was to keep her happy. She had sat by his little grave for the rest of the day, and had only gone inside after Labrador had come to tug her out of the cold. She hadn't cried at all, but Matthew was determined that she was just pulling a brave face until she was alone. After all the British pure bloods didn't tolerate weakness. But Quin didn't think that was right.

Jeanne had always been the happy go lucky little girl, who wasn't afraid of showing her emotions. Unless she was beyond sad. She was doing the one thing she wasn't used to and she didn't know how to do. She was grieving. She had only done it once before, after she witnessed those horrid acts at such a young age, and she hadn't done it since. Now she had lost her new little friend and she didn't know how to handle it. So, when Quin visited her before bed, he gathered her into his arms and held her tight.

"Its ok to cry, kitten," He said softly into her hair. Jeanne knew that it was okay to cry, she just didn't have any tears to cry.

"What did that to Jem?" It was all she could muster. Her eyes had started to water, but the tears still wouldn't fall. Quin sighed and squeezed the little blond tighter in his embrace.

"I don't know, I could have been anything. But it might have been a Hidebehind." Jeanne sniffled at the idea.

"But they only go after people. Why would a Hidebehind attack Jem? It can't be a Hidebehind," she hiccupped. But she still refused to cry. Quin sighed and laid his head atop of his little sisters.

"We don't know that Jeannie. Nifflers aren't native here, Jem was the only one in this area. We don't know how the creatures would react to him. But he wouldn't want you to be sad, after all he was the smartest little guy I've ever encountered," He said softly. Now the sniffling and hiccups were accompanied by tears. They flowed and flowed until there were no tears left to shed, and Quin stayed with her until she was calm enough to talk again.

"This is my fault," She hiccupped. "If I hadn't brought him here… if I hadn't tried to teach him tricks like some common house pet… What will I tell Uncle Arthur? I promised… I promised to take care of Jem… I promised Quin…" The hiccups got worse with every word, until she couldn't get another word out. She had broken her promise and Jem had paid the price for it. Quin simply shushed her and held her as she shivered.

"Arthur will understand Kitten. We can't control little guys like Jem, they're wild to the core. What you did with him is revolutionary, kid. Honestly, I don't even think the best Magizoologists could do what you did. You had him as tame as a Niffler has ever been. He didn't even wreak havoc when he came into the house like he did when he first got here. What you achieved with Jem is what people have been trying to prove for centuries." Jeanne sniffled again and clung closer to her brother.

"Will you sing that song for me Quin. The one about the birds?" she asked meekly. Quin hadn't sung to her since she was little, and he had done it even less after the incident with the frozen lack. She didn't often ask him to either, so when she would he did. And now, he knew that he couldn't say no to her. Not while she was so upset over losing her little friend.

"Alright Jeannie," he muttered before taking a deep breath. He hadn't sung to anyone in years.

After the news of her Niffler's death, Jeanne sent the rest of her Holidays in France with her uncle Francis. She didn't want to be anywhere near her house after Jem's death. So, Francis had taken her in and took care of her for the rest of the summer break.

Jeanne liked staying with her uncles, but she didn't like how much Francis babied her that year. She knew he was worried, and she should have been happy… but she wasn't. She missed her friends from school, and her friends from home. She missed her brothers and sisters. But she missed Jem the most. She knew it was silly. She had had him barely two month's yet she still missed him. Was this what normal people felt? People whose family could die? Whose pets weren't immortal? Jeanne didn't know. She remembered her friends and what the muggles had done to them, but that was so long ago. She had made peace with that after therapy. Lots of therapy. But those were people. Children. They weren't animals. Animals died all the time. So why did she miss Jem so much.

Jeanne tried to put it out of her mind. She smiled for Francis, assured him that she was alright and that she was just nervous for her second year at Hogwarts. Francis didn't believe it, but he knew when to let her be. Jeanne didn't like it when she didn't have control. And the minute he told her that he knew then she really wouldn't be alright. As long as she could she would pretend until it really did stop hurting. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't human. But it was the nation way to do it. And she had been raised by nations. Always too rough, always too fast, always too happy.

So, Francis let her cope in her own way. He took her on shopping trips around Paris, took her to Orleans, Marsais and Disney Land Paris, that had newly opened earlier that year. Francis did what he could to distract her and it seemed to work.

Jeanne spent her free time reading or playing, and, of course, she wrote to her new friends. Astoria told her all about her mother and her lessons, complaining about how boring they were and wishing she could be like Jeanne, traveling and having fun. Lily had been in Paris for a few days during the holidays and the two blonds had spent the day galivanting through the city, Jeanne showing her all the best places to eat, guiding her through the louvre. Jeanne had said goodbye when she left, but the letters were still sent back and forth, and Lily had already struck a plan to make their summer adventure a yearly thing. She had just to convince her parents.

Matt and Allen's letters were far shorter and fewer than anyone else's. They told her how they were, how Oliver was, and that they were glad she was having fun. But they never told her what they were doing. They never mentioned where they were or where they had been. It was frustrating, but she would take what she could get.

To Jeanne's surprise Blaise Zabini had written to her over the summer as well. The older boy had mentioned that he had been readying in his library and come across an old tome with a potions recipe he didn't recognise. He told her about it, but Jeanne had written back telling him it was outdated and had fallen out of use, after asking her uncle Francis about it first. Blaise had taken the information and continued to write to her. they shared a love for reading, even if Blaise would never admit to it at school. There was a reason he was one of the top students in his year. They both liked to travel, and Blaise had a knack for transfiguration, which he offered to share if Jeanne did the same for him with her potion's knowledge.

Despite the rocky start, Jeanne enjoyed her holidays. She returned to Canada in early August to spend time with her Twins on their birthday. And she brought them both presents that she knew they would love.

Two-way mirrors. One each for them, and one from each set for Jeanne. She had missed her boys far too much to go another year without seeing them.


End file.
